It is amazing how many times the reporters get things wrong. There was the time that they said that terrorists had gone after a tank of bromide. It didn’t make any sense until I realized that the terrorists had gone after a big storage tank of bromine.

If a reporter says “X” happened. Asume that something happened that a normal person could have mistake for “X” on a very odd day or with lot’s of sleep deprivation.

But it is not even the reporters fault. Thier job is not actually to inform the public.
Thier job is to make thier screentime (and thus the advertisement time between it) as valable/interesting as possible.
News Reporters are the Door-to-Door salesmen of hte media industry.

BTW, I would not want to be some of those other yahoos that lost before 84 finished. The “smart” ones especially need to hang their heads in shame. And some big industry secrets have been outed. Mwahaha!

I think Phlo and Firedrake may just come out ahead on this one. The FISS people are going to appreciate their willingness to view them as co-equals on a team, after all. Especially firedrake’s frankness about both the limits of his own power, and, the value of GOOD BRANDING … and how it could help the FISS to get the respect they crave.

Assuming Veles created a magical large screen display to show the events of the contest, while this is great publicity for 84 and, by extension, the other FISS, this is going to be massively disgusting revelation of the characters of Neuronet and The Conjuror. Simply because they failed, Phlo and Firedrake are going to be a little looked down on as well as a result, even if they don’t deserve it for actually being nice people. And imagine how Phlo and her teammates and other metas now look at Neuronet for what he did to Phlo.

Phlogiston’s failure (NOW I remember her name! ARGH!) was entirely Neuronet’s fault. What the Heroes, at least, should note is that she very capably included into the team, the one sole person to actually even make it TO the Heart chamber. That’s got to be worth points with at least SOME heroes out there. The growing FISS movement, if nothing else: even though Julie was just a kid, AND “just” a FISS, Phlogiston treated her as a team-mate with an equal contribution to make.

Firedrake’s failure wasn’t a character flaw or anything. He’s been shown to be selfless, NOT the hotdog glory-hound he projects as a professional image. He knows his limitations, and the limits of his powers … and he’s okay with that. Also, his little side-talk with Julie, _in favor_ of the FISS movement’s desires, is going to earn him some friends in those ranks, too.

That is a very intelligent, reasonable, and thoughtful comment that draws upon the human habit of confusing perception with reality. It is also unlikely to apply here for three reasons:
1- This is a game to Veles. That’s the whole point. And a game must have rules, which the players must follow. If Veles ‘cheats’ by showing false images to the witnesses, he destroys his credibility as a fair player, essentially shooting himself in the foot.
2- 84 is perfectly capable of countering any lies Veles may show, especially with the other heroes to back up her testimony. It’s hardly a fool-proof defense, but it makes a false image scheme very unlikely to succeed. Veles is smart. He knows this.
3- The last thing anyone wants, author included, is for this admittedly awesome chapter to be dragged on for another 3 months because of a tacky plot twist. We want closer, dang it! Close it! Clooooose it!

Look at even the most unscripted of reality shows – the producers can make anyone a villain and anyone a hero by just showing the footage they want to show.

Watch 84 trust magical strangers more than her teammates, disrespect her elders, act impetuously and recklessly, doesn’t ask permission before making decisions for the group, speaks for the group uninvited, etc.

True, but “reality” shows typically have some time to edit for the overtone they want. Considering the timing involved, this seems more like trying to edit a live football game to make it look like something happened when it didn’t — substantially harder to accomplish, I would think.

Trickster Gods. Minus Loki. They have senses of humor, and are rarely out to destroy you (screw you, in any possible sense, but not kill. Corpses aren’t long term entertainment. mostly), two traits producers mostly fail to have.

Fantastic glory shot, the hero racing across the finish line — a photo finish, no less — surrounded by other heroes, Lady Liberty dominating the open sky above the mad god refereeing the contest.. and the whole point of all this deviltry, the media live action news van, prominent in the background.

Julie, from a young age, catapulted into stardom, into worldwide celebrity, with all her moods and range of emotions and moves and styles of expression, on display, courtesy of a Trickster god and American television.

*sniff* kinda makes one proud, to see a new youngster join the pantheon of the Olsen twins, Lindsay Lohan, and the Kardasians.

We don’t know what exactly his renovations of Manhattan might have been; thus far, he’s been largely benign, returning jokes when offered violence, and pranks when offered threats. He seems to treat mere death as too boring to bother with. Indeed, sending Julie into the Eggverse might have saved Baba Yaga and all the denizens trapped therein from eternal slavery.

While I have no doubt Julie is not merely a hero, but THE hero, Earth’s Champion, it’s important to remember she’s not yet twelve years old and Veles has deliberately thrust every nuance of her expression and aspect of her life into the public view: traditionally, not an act with entirely benign outcomes.

This is the most sinister aspect of Veles’ villainy, far moreso than transforming sidekicks into rampaging monsters, or teleporting powered people into peril. Before Julie, he was contented apparently to having a quiet mano-a-mano with Earth’s Champion. Now, it’s public as never before, in a fully connected world, without regard for childhood.

Julie may not have saved lives THIS time, but she helped save an entire alternate universe of lives in “Saving Alternate Omaha” as well as potentially saving lives during the chaos/order invasion of the barbecue. I don’t believe that Marie was limiting Julie’s accomplishments to this incident. Also, Veles’s broadcasting of her powers seems more like him looking for limelight than throwing her under the media bus. He probably didn’t even consider that, like a fish doesn’t think about air. He lives in, and arguably by, public recognition.

Ooookay … if the whole world was watching too, then certain someones’ heroic careers just took really big hits.

Neuronet, for one, is absolutely FINISHED. Noone will work with him again, except maybe in _extreme desperation_.

And Conjuror … people are going to take note of his failure to reveal any deep dark secret about himself, AND his failure to be completely forthcoming about his entirely self-centered motivations for retrieving the Eye. He’s going to lose a TON of trust – both from regular people, and from other heroes.

Firehawk and the mist lady, they were forthright, honest, and did their best; heroes know that’s not always enough. They’ll come through this pretty good – the mist-lady (no, I _can’t_ remember her name, dangit) may find her status improved, actually, because she seemed the most interested in actual _teamwork_ (and not of the mind-rape variety).

Meanwhile, Julie? Once she reveals what I’m sure she actually grabbed …. SUPERSTARDOM.

Firedrake and Phlogiston *should* come out of this pretty well, yes — though given what she said, Phlogiston may be looking for a new team, depending on how the others feel about the leader she’s been hiding behind.

Phlogiston said some things that were meant to be private. It’s possible Veles respected that– trickster gods tend to only punish out-and-out jerks, and more likely to encourage disgruntled types to take control of their own fates, for the greater good. I’m more confident thinking Veles will use the information to manipulate her into improving her position in spite of herself, and if that means leaving the team (and who knows, maybe teaching at PS238) then so be it. Of course, he’s the type to define “better situation” as “something more satisfying and worth of one’s talents” rather than “higher up the greasy pole”.

Neuronet may come out ok – if his current team has already agreed to that type of cooperation and has been using it, it can be spun. With willing allies who know each other well – including their powers and limitations – what he did would be powerful and good team work, especially if he’s got a good tactical mind.

If you can spin that he’s used to doing it because his team does it all the time, and that he just forgot that he didn’t have permission because this wasn’t his normal team (and that he therefore didn’t know the limitations of his teammates) then he could be fine – you judge him by the success of his current team, and you make sure he gets training and experience before he’s allowed out with new teams who might let him on.

(You might even set him up as a trainer for new adult heroes, if he’s appropriately ethical. They get a chance to experience super combat under the close eye of an experienced super, who can deal with the rigors of the job while they learn by watching. It’d be a careful balance, but you could do it.)

You can equally spin it “no consent means no consent”. While his own team *might* be OK with him pulling the strings when needed, there’s plenty who won’t, even under threat of death, and therefore will A: take steps never to be in range of his powers ever again, B: take legal steps to limit his ability to do that to anyone, period, and C: probably take him to task in the courts of public opinion. That last one is probably least fair but what did people see: Him grabbing hold of two women (one significantly underage) and force them to do his bidding against their will. He had good reason for doing what he did and no one saw him do anything improper, but you know how public opinion can get.

The other trick is, was it obvious he grabbed them? We know it, but there weren’t any strings to this puppeting, and most telepathy graphics are for the readers benefit, not visible in universe – the only one’s who know may be his team, who know his MO.

Thus why I said ‘if he can spin it’ – It will depend a lot on how the public discussion gets framed. If he can get the discussion framed in terms that are favorable to him, he can come out ok. If he fails to do that, it could go very badly.

You’re WAY too hung up over Neuronet’s group-linking and controlling Phlogiston and 84 as if it were in the same group as a cold-blooded murderer or rapist, it’s not. The most he’s likely to deal with is being chastised for doing it without asking first, some advice not to be so hasty and eager to prove himself, and some ‘dude you’d better not do that to ME while we’re teamed up’ from other heroes not part of his team he might end up having to team with in the future.

On an intellectual level, you have a fair point… I’m talking about the emotional kneejerk reaction of the masses. The idea of someone grabbing the strings and making you dance like a puppet is positively terrifying for some people, and the internet has reacted very violently to people who are guilty of much less. Thankfully the people of the world of PS238 are blessed with common sense (for the most part) and most of them will know the difference, but the vocal minority rarely lets things like logic get in their way.

Tough call. Given the reaction to Cranston’s use of telepathy on politicians, the reaction to Neuronet forcibly “taking the wheel” of two unwilling women may be considered rather more reprehensible than you think.

Taking control of someone and making them a puppet over their objections? Sorry, there is no positive spin on something he did with his powers that is slavery and rape for loss of agency. I don’t know if there was a clear gender grouping makes it worse.

On a mythic level, it’s also colossal hubris to assume YOU know better how to use their powers than they do. Gods are usually fast an mean in how they treat hubris. As Veles is an unfamiliar mythic figure I’ll be interested in seeing his opinions on the contestents’ actions.

Agreed about the hubris. If you asked him, he’d probably say that he couldn’t waste time directing Phlo and 84 verbally and therefore doing what he did, in the heat of battle, was justified, but…. yeah. Hubris.

I hope 84 is smart enough not to fall for Veles’ metagame. Since when is a representative of chaos allowed to appoint a champion of order on order’s behalf? It looks to me like this whole game was a ploy to get some gullible chump to steal Koschei’s needle so that Veles can dominate his long-time rival.

Mr. Mxyzptlk? Who, similarly, is not really out to hurt anyone, he’s just looking for someone to occupy his time with, and if he can help guide and teach said person into becoming Something More (or at the very least not lose all sense of proportion while on that path), so much the better. I believe Veles is merely a chaotic person, which is not the same thing as “a Representative of Chaos”. If the eye really is Introspection or Image of herself or whatever– that’s not the lesson traditionally taught by Chaos… well, *Evil* Chaos, anyway.

Before they got lost in all the reboots at one point during the Zero Hour event I think it was the Teen Titans or some similar younger super group encountered a Mxyzptlk as a serious young man and talked him into not becoming a prankster, then stepped outside and it was a blasted landscape of a death world showing that the general humor and prankster nature of his activities helped keep Superman from becoming too serious and leading ot a bad future so the heroes had to quickly change their minds and his to make him into the prankster everyone’s familiar with.

That’d be Young Justice (issue #3, to be exact, while the team was just Tim Drake Robin, Superboy, and Impulse), during Peter David’s tenure as writer. Great series, and kind of a shame it got folded into the Teen Titans and lost a lot of what made it unique.

Sigh. Mr. Williams has been averaging one page every two weeks recently. Given that the next page will deal, at least initially, with Veles’ “jumbotron” (in whatever form it took), we may need to wait a month before confirming what 84 has in her hand.

Mr. Williams needs to change his updated M-W-F to ‘Updated Whenever’. It would be more accurate and no longer lying. It’s frustrating to check every couple days in hopes of an update that takes weeks to come.

1: If the reporter asks a question like that (I believe the lawyer types would say the question “assumes facts not in evidence”), either call him on it or change the subject while you think about how best to call him on it. ^_^

I was also hoping for the mirror “I” solution; but if it’s clenched in her fist then that would be pretty difficult. ON the other hand though, assuming this page isn’t the last gambit of the egg though, the fallout for the other four heroes is going to be quite interesting. For example, now that Firedrake and Phlogiston have accidentally outed themselves Phlogiston might be asked to leave, or she might be asked to assume a true leadership role which may or may not see the reigning “leader” leave out of pride; and that’s before we get to the question of her choosing of her own will to stay or go. Firedrake might have to train harder for more subtle uses of his power and become even louder and thus better at his position; or he might effectively have put himself out of a job; and that’s aside from all the people who’ll be looking twice at conjurer (the most obvious other choice for the false self/liar since Firedrake copped to it, and the wall said Julie doesn’t have enough self-deceptions yet), and who at the very least will warn off/permanently snub/etc Net. In other words, no matter what happens, Veles has brought change; and that is the true essence of a trickster: to leave things differently, for better or worse than how one found them. To test and see who rises, and who crumbles. To see who gets shunned despite craving attention/acceptance, and who is held up high despite craving solitude. Remember, the whole reason most tricksters get involved is because they themselves don’t know the exact outcome without meddling.